University of Chicago Law School Announces Additions to Faculty
The University of Chicago Law School is pleased to announce an extraordinarily successful faculty hiring season, yielding seven new members of the academic faculty and one new member of the clinical faculty: Daniel Abebe, Anu Bradford, Rosalind Dixon, Thomas Ginsburg, Aziz Huq, Brian Leiter, Omri Ben-Shahar, and Alison Siegler. At a recent faculty meeting, Dean Saul Levmore summarized this success as “representing a substantial period of growth, improvement, and promise for the future. The new group reflects a mix of junior and senior appointments. In terms of subject matter expertise, though the group includes a world-class law-and-economics scholar as well as jurisprudence expert, the center of gravity is in international law and comparative law. In one swoop, the University of Chicago Law School has become the leading place to study international law, private and public. I predict that within a few years there will be several major developments in international law attributed to the ‘Chicago School.’”
A former clerk for Judge Damon J. Keith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit and later a corporate associate at Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP in New York City, Assistant Professor of Law Daniel Abebe most recently served as a Bigelow Teaching Fellow and Lecturer in Law at Chicago. Mr Abebe’s teaching and research interests include public international law, foreign relations law, contracts, international business transactions, corporations and international trade. He earned his J.D. from Harvard Law School and his A.M. in Political Science from the University of Chicago.
Omri Ben-Shahar, appointed as the Bernice J. Greenberg Professor of Law, comes to Chicago from the University of Michigan Law School, where he had been a full-time faculty member since 1999. At Michigan, Mr. Ben-Shahar founded and directed the Olin Center for Law and Economics. He previously taught as a professor of law and economics at Tel-Aviv University, was a research fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute, served as a panel member of Israel's Antitrust Court, and clerked at the Supreme Court of Israel. Mr. Ben-Shahar’s teaching and research interests include contract law and products liability and the intersection of law and economics. He earned his LL.M. and S.J.D. as well as a Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard University.
Assistant Professor of Law Anu Bradford has held teaching appointments at Brandeis University, Harvard College, and the University of Helsinki. Her teaching and research interests include international trade law and international political economy, international antitrust regulation, international law and international relations, and European law. She earned her Master of Laws and Licentiate in Laws from the University of Helsinki and her L.L.M. and S.J.D. from Harvard Law School.
A former clerk to Chief Justice Murray Gleeson of the High Court of Australia, Assistant Professor of Law Rosalind Dixon has held teaching appointments and fellowships with Harvard Law School and the University of New South Wales Law School since 2003. Her teaching and research interests include comparative constitutional law and constitutional design, international human rights, constitutional law, and law and gender. She earned her L.L.M. and S.J.D. from Harvard Law School.
Formerly of the University of Illinois College of Law, Visiting Professor Thomas Ginsburg has been appointed Professor of Law. He has edited or authored five books, including Judicial Review in New Democracies, which won the C. Herman Pritchett Award from the American Political Science Association for best book on law and courts. At Illinois, Mr. Ginsburg co-directed the Comparative Constitutions Project, and he has consulted with numerous international development agencies and foreign governments on legal and constitutional reform. Before entering law teaching, he served as a legal adviser at the Iran-U.S. Claims Tribunal. His teaching and research interests are focused on comparative and international law from an interdisciplinary perspective. He earned his J.D. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of California–Berkeley.
Aziz Huq, who will begin as Assistant Professor of Law in 2009, is currently Deputy Director of the Justice Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, New York University School of Law. Before joining the Brennan Center, Mr. Huq clerked for Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and for Judge Robert D. Sack of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. Mr. Huq is coauthor, with Fritz Schwarz, of Unchecked and Unbalanced: Presidential Power in a Time of Terror. He will likely teach constitutional law and civil procedure. He earned his J.D. from Columbia Law School.
Brian Leiter, appointed as the John P. Wilson Professor of Law, comes to Chicago from the University of Texas at Austin, where he held the Hines H. Baker and Thelma Kelley Baker Chair in Law and also served as Professor of Philosophy and Founder and Director of the Law & Philosophy Program. Mr. Leiter is coeditor of the journal Legal Theory and editor of the Routledge Philosophers book series. He is the author of two books—Nietzsche on Morality and Naturalizing Jurisprudence: Essays on American Legal Realism and Naturalism in Legal Philosophy—and editor of six others. His teaching and research interests include jurisprudence and evidence. Mr. Leiter earned his J.D. and Ph.D. from the University of Michigan.
As previously announced, Alison Siegler has been appointed Assistant Clinical Professor of Law. A former clerk for U.S. District Judge Robert W. Gettleman in Chicago, Ms. Siegler was a Prettyman Fellow at Georgetown University Law Center’s Criminal Justice Clinic, where she represented indigent clients in D.C. Superior Court and supervised and taught third-year law students in the clinic. Most recently, as a staff attorney with the Federal Defender Program, she represented indigent criminal defendants in federal district court and in the Seventh Circuit. Ms. Siegler earned her J.D. from Yale Law School and her L.L.M. from Georgetown University Law Center.